Corona X
by milleniumfalken
Summary: When morally ambiguous tech-runner Flynnagan Rider chanced upon an underground bunker and met the strange and beautiful Rapunzel, the fate of new Corona rests in their hands. New Chapter: Betrayal
1. Tech Runner

**Chapter One: Tech-Runner**

The semi desert-like plain which was previously only scattered with clumps of wild grass and random cacti began to thicken with vegetation. He saw creepers and flowering grass. And the vegetation came from a tall gigantic wall made of concrete standing not ten feet away from him and his cohort of two. The wind made the long coat he was wearing flap wildly. He kicked the dust with his boots, triumphant.

"Here we are, guys," the tall and lean young man said to his two accomplices, muscular and large young men of about his age. They were two heads taller than him and the girths of their chests were twice the size of his. But Flynnagan Rider was confident that whatever contained inside their red hair covered skulls were nothing compared to the genius of his mind. And their advantage in strength and size was nothing to challenge his aesthetic advantages. But none of his awesomeness mattered compared to this fact: He is the first and original tech-runner in both Corona and the City and his name will be mentioned by future tech-runners in the bleak history of the two kingdoms, desperate to repeat the kind of glory he had accomplished. He began tech running. No, he created tech-running.

And the process of accomplishing that glory had now made him standing in front of the wall that separated the utopian kingdom of Corona from the City while he was giving the Stabbington brothers a lesson in history.

"This is history in the making," Flynnagan said with his longish, ear-covering hair whipping his face in the madly blowing wind. "The boundary between Corona and the City will blur just by the simple act of us stealing LifeData from the Castle. Three hundred years of separation will end. Corona will have what we have, and the City will have what Corona doesn't want to give."

"Shut the history lesson, Rider," the younger Stabbington said, the dafter one with no patience for complicated concepts, cutting him off. How on earth could the bumbling red head know what he was trying to do when he didn't understand the history and origin of their task? Flynnagan prided himself in his power of memory and he hadn't had the chance to show it off. Even thievery, er, tech-running had its origin.

"This wall was built as a statement of conflict between our forefathers. One who abandoned the City sought harmony with nature and so barricaded his people behind the wall. Three hundred years passed and the ninth King rules Corona now."

"Yeah, yeah. And the one who stayed in the City worships fuel and light and speed. Just tell us how do we get pass this wall without being jumped by the Coronian guards, Rider," the elder Stabbington, the smarter one scoffed at him. Beggars can't be choosers, Flynnagan thought. He had an intellectual company, albeit not of the desired kind, in the elder Stabbington.

"Walls do not go on forever," Flynnagan said smugly.

"Then, why the hell did you bring us here? You could have straightaway taken us to the point where we can enter Corona!"

"I want you guys to have respect of my discoveries. To have some respect for the trials and errors I've made."

"C'mon Rider. We do this job, we'll have all the respect in the world."

Stabbington the Younger pulled his collar. Flynn went back to his hover mobile and Flynn kicked the engine to life. As much as the world has hoped and hadn't stop hoping, the scientists still hadn't found the ultimate and total alternative to fossil fuel. So their hover mobiles still run on fossil fuel. They modified it, made it more optimum in use but they still have to dig deeper and deeper with every passing year. The three men on ho-mobs sped off to the secret entry that will lead them to the centre of Corona. The Castle. The Coronians had another name for it. They called it The Palace of Equilibrium. But the phrase was too long for the Stabbingtons. So he would just call it as the Castle.

They reached the end of the wall. The wall ended with an enclosure of trees that jumped down to a cliff of deep ravine. It was peculiar how such greenery could exist in the sudden cut off of almost prairie-like dryness of the vast area that separated the City and Corona. It was as if the City was sucking up moisture and fertility from the land surrounding it, and Corona was fighting back from their side.

"How the hell are we going to get through the thick vines with our ho-mobs?" The younger Stabbington asked.

"Don't fret, guys. I've made a hole camouflaged with a curtain of this green thing. See?" Flynnagan said as he reached out his hand to part a hanging sheet of vines. Behind the curtain was a hole fit for a man and his vehicle.

"How many times have you been to Corona, eh, Rider?" The elder Stabbington asked.

"Trade secret. I ain't telling," he said. Truth is, he had been to this side of civilisation more than five times. The Stabbingtons were petty thieves in his eyes. They stole things from homes and offices. Even though there were elements of dishonesty in his trade but he was way above them. He's a tech runner. He sold technology, er, stolen technology from the City to the oppressed people of Corona. And they pay him in gold which was the one thing that both people of Corona and the City appreciate. And this time, by his own moral standard, he figured that Corona should give back to the City. Trading technology and he was their middleman, with a price.

Working to his manipulations, he had managed to make the Stabbingtons join him in the search and frisking away the fabled Coronian Data of Life or LifeData. According to tales spread over centuries, it contained the secret of equilibrium guarded by the Coronians that kept their little kingdom brimming with resources, great health, and sustainability that were guaranteed for centuries to come. While the City, in its overzealous race for progress had squeezed all its available resources from the surrounding lands and overseas, assuming that all can be bought with currency. But things were going absolutely wrong. Life expectation was declining despite the efficient albeit expensive medical care. People were dying more rapidly, in violent crimes and cellular diseases, slow poisoning and other unnatural or premature causes. Despite the technology to make labour easier and ways to make people look and seem younger, at the cellular level, people of the City were getting older and sicker faster.

There were enclaves of Corona-like settlements all over the world, where people who made the decision to live off the grid stayed. But even the most conscientious were curious. That's where he came in. Offering stolen goods containing amusements into the homes of the Coronians, for a price. And now, the City wanted something in return from the Coronians. The City wanted the secret to life and he would give it to any party that can offer him the highest price.

Soon, they made their journey across the greenery, across ravines and streams and over small hills. The Stabbingtons kept quite while they struggled to keep up with him.

"Told you guys to go easy on the cigarettes," Flynn said as he saw them wheezing and coughing. They had left their ho-mobs just half a mile away in a small cave made from a giant tree's roots and now they were on foot heading towards civilization in discivilization. They could not bring their hover mobiles with them in a place where people ride bicycles and had no powered machinery at all. They had to blend in with the locals. In the silence of the gathering dark, the purring sound of their ho-mobs would be pure give-away.

They arrived at a large body of water, a lake surrounded by tree-lined shore and in very faint lighting that could only be originating from beeswax candles and tree's sap in small homes and narrow streets. In the semi-darkness, they saw a city upon an island.

"Woah! Are we lost in time?" The younger Stabbington asked.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Flynnagan asked dreamily.

"This is an island in a nightmare."

"Guys, you're totally not feeling it. Look!" Flynn pointed to the tree-lined shore where thousands pinpoint of lights suspended in the air, floating and flashing in unison.

"Ghosts!" The elder Stabbingtons shrieked.

"You guys are hopeless," Flynnagan sighed as he walked on along the bridge, heading straight into the population.

"Come on, guys. The Secret of Life awaits."

The Palace of Equilibrium was a multi-tiered complex integrated with plant life. Its structure was made of chiselled stones from the rocky outcrop. Some extensions were made of wood. It was not exactly grandeur in terms of size but it was made over hundreds of years, by happy craftsmen who had lived to enjoy their handiwork bringing lasting pleasure to society. The castle was shared by people who work for the Supreme Scientists-Administrators, the King and Queen. But smaller homes had sprouted on the island, their architecture complying with the law of environmental-friendliness and energy efficiency. In short, no electricity, no digital entertainment, only shadow puppetry and reading by candlelight and sex, most importantly. Flynnagan was actually thinking about sex in such community where there was no distraction, no alternatives but pure unadultered sex of two people completely focused on the task, rolling in the dark and the deep. It could be awesome, he thought and that thought gave him hope.

"This is hell on earth," said the elder Stabbington. But Flynnagan was looking far away from the roof the mansion-sized Castle on top of the rocky outcrop, looking out to the whole of Corona. Suddenly, Flynnagan felt his chest becoming heavy. As strange and impossible as it seemed, if there was one place he could belong, he would want to belong here. Right here in Corona.

_Picture me in a castle of my own. In this wholesome goodness! _He thought. But he came back to the present moment to complete the task at hand.

"Yup, make it right here," Flynnagan ordered the Stabbingtons to remove the tiles on the roof. In his hands, he was holding a blueprint of sort of the Castle.

"What did you give away for that?" The younger Stabbington asked.

"A radio."

"Do they have transmission here?"

"They have a radio tower."

"What for?"

"Other than for radio transmission, I don't know," Flynnagan mused. He wouldn't say more to the Stabbingtons. He would be giving away too much. Too much of a place he had grew fond of. But he would find out more about the radio tower. After this thing.

A hole fit for a slim man materialised. Flynnagan attached a rappelling rope to his torso. He was getting into the room called the 'Princess' Shrine'.

"Lower me down, guys."

They lowered him down and he saw it at once. A tablet the size of two palms of the human hand put together sitting on a pedestal. There was no one around. No one was guarding the data. He took it, touched the white tablet with his bare hands and he lifted it. The moment it left the pedestal, a deafening siren screamed in the shrine. Flynnagan shoved the tablet into the satchel he had slung across his chest and held on tight to the rappelling rope.

"Dammit, guys! Quick quick quick quick quick!" He called to the Stabbingtons. They pulled him up as fast as they could.

"I thought no electricity, no technology, no alarm, man!" The elder Stabbington grunted.

"I don't know, guys! This is not the intel I gathered!" Flynnagan garbled in annoyance. He'd been had. He didn't know how it happened. Flynnagan made it out to the roof. He took off the rappelling rope and just left it on the roof before the three of them made a mad run from the roof, jumped onto another roof, shimmied down a pole, landed on solid ground and made a run out into the night. As soon as they reached the forest, Flynnagan operated his hover mobile remote and in seconds, his vehicle flew towards him. He jumped onto it and off the two common thieves and one tech-runner, Flynn would insist to be called that, went out of the border of Corona, back to the crumbling city of eternally luminescent night lights.

o-o-o-o

Back in Corona, unaccustomed to any intrusion, the guards were of course, unprepared. For the first time in three hundred years, which was basically the entire duration of Coronian history, someone had stolen from the Castle. But the Princess' Shrine was the last place any thief would want to steal from. Especially when the King and Queen were the Supreme Scientists-Administrators. They had everything on automatic surveillance. And at once, words were out, that Flynnagan Rider was now a wanted person. It missed Flynnagan's reasoning that the people buying the stolen technology he sold would still be loyal to their King and freely gave them intel to gain amnesty from the possession of contraband goods.

"Why would anyone take something that reminds us of our daughter?"The Queen asked her husband. She knew very well that he could not answer. Not the kind of answer that she wanted.

"I don't know," the King said, deep in thought, "but I've sent our guards to the City. They will find this Flynnagan Rider character and he will return to us what is ours."

"It's been too long, Markus. I'm starting to feel that all this is for nothing."

"I know, Ygraine. But we can't give up hope. And this little intrusion won't defeat us," the King said and kissed her, coldly, sterile-like on the top her head, indicating that he was worried and madly disturbed by the incident.

The King, Markus went to his laboratory. He faced it once again, like many times before in the duration close to eighteen years, the console made from blinking buttons and switches and screens. He pushed down a lever, and power surged through the machines. The King spoke into a tiny microphone attached to his jaw and ears.

"Transmission number 6188," he said and touched another button. A series of pictures ran across the screen. A baby girl was born, she had golden hair and she was in her mother's arms. The people of Corona celebrated. As new batch of fireflies grown from the nursery was released from the confines of the wall, giving a glimpse of almost extra-terrestrial beauty to the world, especially citizens of the City, whose eyes were so accustomed to brightness that they had never seen the stars, let alone fireflies. The fireflies escaped to the sky outside the wall for a few hours and they would return to their moisture-laden home around the lake.

The transmission ran for just ten seconds, and it would invade TV station transmissions all over the City. Just ten seconds of strange but brief transmission, daily. He transmitted the visuals at a random time of the day, to avoid the stations from blocking the signal or making commercials appear during the transmission. The randomness of the transmission made it less of an annoyance. He even assumed that most of the city dwellers had grown fond of the transmission.

"Come back to Corona, Princess, if you see this and remembers," he prayed.

"Please, find a way home."

Postscript: This is my first Tangled fic. I usually dig SF and anime/ manga. But this animated film rocked my sanity and I had to do an SF take of it. Please review. It will motivate me to write faster. Tell me if this kind of AU has potential.


	2. How To Survive a Fake Nuclear Fallout

**Chapter Two: How to Survive a Fake Nuclear Fallout**

A girl fidgeted nervously in front of an old TV set. She had chartered the time the rogue transmission appeared and she had found a pattern that had ran through the length of five years. By her calculations that she had perfected over the years, another transmission was due in this hour. The TV was on with something that she did not bother with when suddenly the screen turned into static and there it was - the phantom transmission. A baby being born, held in arms of his or her mother, the people celebrating, and the release of thousands of pinpoint of lights into the dark sky. The sight, even though she had seen a thousand times gave her that same feeling of awe. The pinpoints of light, against the complete darkness of the background, that she assumed to be called as the 'sky' gave a maddening panic as if she had been suffering from subconscious claustrophobia. After the ten seconds ended, the transmission was replaced by other visuals. She saw people in all sorts of situations, some she could connect into stories of her imagination but some were too sketchy to even be contemplated because the box did not have sound. She was guessing from the pictures but at most times she gave up because words were so important to her. The more she saw the visuals on the screen, the more she believed that the world is not on fire like Mother had told her.

Something wiggled itself out from behind a heap of old electric cables. It's the chameleon that she found in the shower a month ago. Somehow, the reptilian had slipped into the bunker when Mother made her entry when she returned from one of her trips to get provisions from the so-called Aid Centre. And the chameleon decided to stay close to water source, the shower.

"Hi, Pascal," she greeted the reptilian and held out her hand so it could climb to her shoulder and hide behind her long golden hair. She named the chameleon Pascal, after the French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and philosopher, Blaise Pascal. She had read about the prodigy in the series of encyclopaedia entitled 'The World Book' that Mother had provided her with. The encyclopaedia which consisted of twenty-six volumes contained the history and memorial remains of the old world before the nuclear holocaust, which had driven Mother to seek refuge in the underground bunker. And Mother had given birth to her in the bunker. So had she lived there for almost eighteen years now. She only had Mother for company, until Pascal came along. She knew from The World Book series published in the year 1990 AD that chameleons have the lifespan of roughly five years, so she guessed that she had company to last her three to four more years before another would come along , slipping through the bunker's entrance as Mother returned from her trip for provisions. Pascal made a repetitive whirring noise.

"What is it? Did I leave the stove on? The shower?" The whirring sound continued.

"Oopss! Mother's going to be here in minutes!" She realised and Pascal stopped its whirring sound instantly. The girl jumped and turned off the TV, unplugged the set and pushed the set back against the heap of other useless and battered electrical appliances in the storeroom.

"Mother must never know about the TV set," she muttered to herself and looked at the reptile. "And she must never know about you either. Because she said that the whole world is fried to a crisp. You're not supposed to exist." She walked to the shower and deposited him there.

"You know that you must do," she said.

The girl walked to the Main, where Mother made her experiments and record the results in the gigantic intelligence console consisting of screens and panels. She waited and saw the turning wheel on the door moved. _Mother is home_. She turned the wheel in unison and thus helped the woman make her entry. The airtight door opened and Mother stood there, a form totally covered in yellow biohazard suit. The girl unzipped the attachment at the neck and pulled it down. Mother pulled off her head gear-mask and shook her head, her magnificent mass of black curly hair falling to her back. She stepped out of the yellow biohazard suit and Rapunzel hung the suit in a see-through capsule attached to the bunker's wall. There was only one biohazard suit in the bunker. And she noticed that fact ever since she could remember. And she noticed how the suit never got worn out. Seventeen years had passed and Mother was still wearing the same suit.

"Oh, Rapunzel!" Mother's voice was deep and thick. She dumped a sack of provisions into the girl's arms.

"Hi, Mother!" The girl, Rapunzel greeted her mother.

"It must be exhausting having to turn that damn wheel every day for me."

"Oh, it's nothing, Mother," Rapunzel said.

"Then, I don't know why it took so long!" Mother grimaced at her. Rapunzel's face dropped. She didn't want Mother to feel upset after a tiring day outside.

"Oh, I'm just joking, darling! Why do you have to take everything so seriously?" Mother said and pinched her cheek. Rapunzel ignored Mother's theatrics and proceeded to empty the sack Mother brought home. Same old, same old canned sardine, canned peaches, canned spaghetti, canned beans. But she found a rarity - two red apples!

"How did you get these, Mother?"

"They managed to grow a new batch of crop and voila! The apples are ripe for the picking and it's just your luck that I managed to get two for you," Mother said cheerfully, in reaction to her daughter's expression of gratitude and awe.

"Does this mean that it is already safe for me to go outside?" Rapunzel popped the question. As sudden as a crash of thunder, Mother's cheerful expression turned dark. Rapunzel suddenly regret her question. She should have kept quiet! But she couldn't help it.

"NO!" Mother yelled. But as soon as it was let out, Mother seemed sorry. She moved towards her and held her shoulders.

"Do you know what happened to me today, child?"

Rapunzel didn't dare to say a word to that question.

"A man with six fingers on both his hands groped me in the Aid Centre! He said how beautiful I was and he wanted to be as perfect as I am!" Mother trembled as she reminded herself of the story. Rapunzel's eyes widened.

"The world isn't as terrible as it used to be. But the people affected by the nuclear fallout are coming out to the public. They were birthed by mothers who were carrying them during and after the fallout. They are terrible people. Poor them. It's not their fault, I know! But they're like monsters! Men with pointy teeth. Men who act like cannibals and savages just because they look like cannibals and savages. And if they know what you can do, they will take you."

"I can help these people get better, Mother. If that's what you mean."

"Oh, you're too naive, Rapunzel!" Mother wiped her forehead, as if she was about to faint.

"Do you think they will stand in line, in orderly fashion, to wait for you to wrap your mutated hair around them and cure them of their diseases?"

"Won't they?"

"No! They will take you and keep you for themselves. You'll be torn apart like a ragdoll in the hands of an evil child. They will imprison you and hurt you for your ability."

Mother ended her tirade with a hug. Rapunzel suspected that there is very little truth about what she had been feeding her for years and years. But a part of her wanted to believe Mother. Why would Mother lie to her if it isn't for her own good? Why would Mother want to lie to her at all? And to lie with a set up so elaborate while Mother could have continued living a normal life outside the bunker? What if what Mother said is true? What if all her hypotheses about the truth of the nuclear fallout was just because she felt that she is mature enough to go outside instead of it is SAFE enough to go outside. But she knew what it was. It was the things she saw from the television, of beautiful men in their straight form, their shoulders and their torsos linked together like a question mark. Their acts of touching their lips to the womenfolk's and giving them ecstasy. She wanted to know the truth of the world, nuclear holocaust or not, with her own eyes. And of course, about the hundreds of thousands of lights in the completely dark night sky. _What are they? _Will she ever be able to see them?

Mother slumped on a spinning chair, visibly upset, her hands holding the bridge of her nose. She looked older, more tired. Rapunzel pitied her, despite of the burning questions in her mind. Silently, she walked to Mother. And she closed her eyes as she concentrated her mind on a task. She was singing a song in her mind, a song of healing and restoration.

As she closed her eyes, her long blond hair, which was three times longer than the length of her body, began to move like snakes. The thick flow of hair draped itself upon Mother's shoulders and it began to glow like fluorescent light in the bunker's hallway. When she opened her eyes again, Mother was smiling and her mood improved greatly. Mother had regained her youthful and revitalised look.

"Oh Rapunzel, what will I do without you? You're special. Transferable regenerative ability isn't the best phrase to describe you. You're a miracle. An angel is disguise in this hellish, dark world," Mother said, hugging her.

That night, Rapunzel lay in bed. The glass ceiling above her was unhindered in sight. She could see the brightness of the night. But it was not from the natural satellite called the Moon. It was something else. The constant brightness at night that blotted out the stars. Mother called it the nuclear afterglow. Radiation. But she knew better. Nuclear radiation does not radiate. Nuclear radiation isn't about light. What she saw from the glass partition was not radiation because nuclear radiation cannot be seen with the naked eye. She knew what she saw was light. Light that continued radiating through the night that it blotted out the stars and the constellations immortalised in the World Book.

But she still didn't know why would Mother lie to her, if she was truly lying to her?

Postscript: I know what you must have been thinking. A Tangled sci-fi? That is a sure-fire fic-writing disaster. But this story will grow on you. **CommanderNemo**, thanks a lot, man!


	3. Betrayal

**Chapter Three: Betrayal**

There were a few things that Flynn Rider carried on his person during tech running. Always hanging on his neck was a gas mask. No one knew when one is going to be face to face with a threat to one's lungs. On his waist was a belt with a small pouch containing three spheres the size of golf balls. And some light snacks. He chewed gum as he rode happily back from the heist. Meanwhile, the elder Stabbington had sped up to be right by his side and shouted to him.

"Give me the satchel, Rider!"

"Relax! We're approaching the City! We'll do the split there," Rider yelled back at him.

"I don't trust you, Rider!"

"What? Can't hear you, man!" Rider yelled to the wind and continued speeding. The elder Stabbington grunted and picked up speed to catch up with him.

"Shit!" Flynnagan said as he spied what the dots were as they got closer. A cohort of ten men, on vehicles similar to their hover mobiles. And Flynn was glad that he had got his hands on those three EMP bombs the size of golf balls when he saw little dots of approaching entities from behind in the rear view mirror. The elder Stabbington saw the change in his face and asked.

"What?"

"Coronian guards! We gotta loose them. We must separate."

"Not without the LifeData, you motherfucker."

Flynnagan raised an eyebrow. He'd been called that, so no fucks were given. But his mind was running. "There!" Flynnagan threw the satchel at the Stabbington's face. And sped on. The Coronian guards were closing the distance. Soon they would be able to corner them. Who knew what kind of armament the guards have? Ten against three, the odds were not very promising. Flynnagan was not going to separate from the Stabbingtons. Not yet, with his beloved satchel with them. And the Stabbingtons, ever so wary about the other's transparency, were stuck together. The Coronian guards were really dynamite. They closed in matter of seconds. Obviously the Captain of the Guards had advantage with his ride. He was leading and he was fast.

It's time. Flynnagan killed his engine while he was speeding in mid air. The sudden halt made him flew off his hover mobiles and slid and rolled on the sand and gravels. The Stabbingtons and the guards, on top speed lurched on with their vehicles. But before he hit the ground, he had thrown an EMP bomb towards the cohort. And the machines with their engines running were disabled as the bomb threw a blast of electromagnetic pulse. The men were thrown off their vehicles and they were no less different from Flynnagan, all spitting sand and gravel. But Flynnagan, who had his engine dead before the EMP bomb, was able to restart his engine and went back on his ho-mob. He rode to the group of fallen men and their dead machines. The elder Stabbington, after shaking off the sand and hurting limbs, checked the satchel for its content. The giant of a man shouted madly.

"Rider!"

Flynnagan rode pass him and snatched the satchel from the Stabbington's hand.

"Sorry. I can't let them have it. See you in the City!" He said in a voice that was a trail of mocking sound. Flynnagan Rider was off again, peerless and proud, with his own private plan.

o-o-o-o

The Coronian guards were sprawled on the sand in various positions that warranted pain. The Captain, on the speediest ride was knocked off his hover mobile more spectacularly than the rest. The fall on the sand knocked him out. As the cohort and their pursuits, the Stabbingtons were struggling with sand in their eyes and mouths and getting their limbs to coordinate, the machine which was the Captain's ride hummed deeply. Its headlight turned on by itself and the rotors started running, providing the machine with its uplift force. Beeping sounds came out from its control panel, accompanied by the action prompt. _Resuming the pursuit of target, Flynnagan Rider, dweller of the City. _As suddenly as it was turned on by itself, the vehicle sped off on its own volition, its radar wired to the homing device in the LifeData tablet, which was in the possession of its target, Flynnagan Rider.

The Captain regained consciousness and spurted out sand and dirt from his mouth. His thick, serious-looking moustache was completely white covered in sand and dust. He stood on his feet and looked around to find his vehicle. All his men were already reunited with their vehicles, and his seemed to be nowhere within sight.

"Dammit, MAX! Not you too," the Captain cursed.

"What happened to MAX, Captain?" One of the guards asked him.

"The thief Rider had stolen it!"

"Waiting for your orders, Captain!"

"We're going to ride to the City. Rider and LifeData must be found before we can go back to Corona," the Captain ordered his men.

o-o-o-o

Flynn had a good distance of five miles away from the Coronian Guards and the Stabbingtons after the EMP bombing happened.

"Shit," he cursed when he saw that his vehicle was low on fuel. He slowed it down so he could reach the City and get it refuelled. He hated slowing down for anything. But he felt quite safe. A standard issue City hover-mobile would need at least an hour to regain its system functions after being struck by an EMP bomb. He would be beyond reach in an hour.

But the fantastic feeling of being safe beyond reach was temporary. A sharp whirring sound made him turned his head. What he saw made his face lose color. What the hell? A hover-mobile without a rider? Anyone would be right to say that it was like Flynn was looking at a ghost. Flynn sped away from the way to the City. If anything happened, he didn't want it to happen there. It would cause too much damage and attract too much attention. Not the kind of attention he wanted. He preferred things to happen in the Wasteland, the roughly twenty square miles of junkyard for metal scrap. He had been there once or twice, scavenging for parts. Maybe something would come up there and help him go through this mess.

Shit shit shit shit dammit, his mind kept running about the new menace. This is not standard issue hover mobiles. How the hell a backwater backward backyard place like Corona have such technology? A vehicle which needed no rider to operate, homed in on a target of pursuit. He had completely messed up his own fool-proof plan by overlooking this technical possibility. And worse, his own ho-mob was really running low on fuel. He couldn't speed, and he couldn't be without a vehicle in a desert wasteland.

"Sorry, babe. Gotta move on," he said and he climbed onto his ho-mob. Steadily, carefully he stood on the slowing vehicle. The pursuing Coronian vehicle was getting really close. Flynnagan had no idea what the machine was going to do. Sprout mechanical arms and snatch his satchel? But it seemed that it was going to nudge into his dying vehicle. With one swift jump, Flynnagan jumped onto the back of the Coronian vehicle. He used one hand to control the handle of the ho-mob and with the other he took out a small hand-held device and jacked a little implement into the vehicle's control panel. At least, the interface is identical with the City's ho-mobs, he breathed. A series of command appeared. Flynnagan could read some of it. Some missed his eyes when he blinked. Something beeped after a few seconds of running commands. The interface showed the vehicle's identity: MAXIMUS – Maximum Intelligence Mobile Unmanned Speeder.

Ahah! It's done, he exhaled. What a fancy name, Flynn scoffed. And how simply he had overridden its system. And he pressed on for speed. The vehicle was his. The Coronian version of the ho-mobs, or MAX ran according to his control for about fifty meters before it bucked and halted, almost throwing him off its back.

What the h – Flynn stuck the drive into the interface again and began pushing in commands through his handheld device. The machine ran again and not a few minutes before it buck and halt. A new prompt appeared on the screen. _Apprehend Flynnagan Rider. Rescue the LifeData_.

Shit. Flynnagan cursed. He was on the back of the very machine whose objective in existing is to take his captive and free him of his precious cargo. Flynn knew what he had to do. He took out the now tasteless chewing gum from his mouth and stuck it on one of the two EMP bombs he had left. He stuck the bomb onto the vehicle. He jumped off it and hugged the ground littered with metal scraps. The EMP bomb exploded, giving off a ring of energy as it disabled MAXIMUS for the second time. The energy from the EMP subsided and Flynnagan made a run for his life. He didn't know how long the vehicle would stay immobilised. But he was running as fast as he could.

The Wasteland got denser as he got to its centre. At a clearing, he saw a sunken entrance into the ground. He approached cautiously. He could hear the machine whirring back to life. There was a warning sign against biohazard threat on the door. But he would face biohazard threat rather than be taken by the machine. Anyway, most things were tagged as biohazard threat these days. People ill with flu. Stale food item. Pollution. Rain water. He'd take them on one at a time.

He came face to face with a metal door and its panel for code entry. Flynn took out his set of screwdrivers and dismantled the panel. He cut the wires and put the panel back together. Taking a deep breath he put on his gas mask and twisted the metal handle. It opened with a click. He entered a poorly lit subterranean tunnel and clicked the door back in place. There was a dead bolt inside and he put in on. He faced another obstacle. A thick metal door with wheel like ones he sees in ship compartments. He held the wheel with both hands and turned it clockwise.

Postcript: Yup, I'm still here.


End file.
